Most display fixtures have barely made any improvement for a long period of time. Some reasons for this are as follows:    1) Considerable effort has been made for the sales increase of goods by spending much money, while less effort has been made to improve the golf club display supporting device since little is known about how the display fixture contributes to sales increases.    2) At times, manufacturers of sporting goods have made goods display fixtures. In this case, display fixtures made by the manufacturer are small in quantity, expensive, and not frequently made, inevitably.    3) In supermarkets or department stores, the salesperson on the sales floor is able to create good ideas on improvement and enhancement of the goods display fixtures if he/she has time enough to do so.    4) Little development of goods display fixtures to attractively and effectively display and exhibit sporting goods has been made since the sporting goods industry was classified as the manufacturer to manufacture sporting goods and as the distributor to distribute the goods.
Those negative factors make it difficult for designers to design goods display fixtures suitable to the effective increase of the sales for sporting goods. Accordingly, an object of the present invention relates to a golf club display supporting device for displaying and exhibiting golf clubs, which involves a goods display fixture for displaying and exhibiting sporting goods, and to develop a goods display supporting device through the search of sales of the goods and checking for problems relating to the sales. Careful studying of the prior task as the background task presented the following conclusions.
The applicant of the present patent application proposed a unique display supporting device for display of golf clubs in Japanese Patent Publication TOKUKOUHEI No. 04-42925. The supporting device includes a combination of a base member made of metal or plastic and a surface ornamental member made of a resilient material such as synthetic resin or silicone resin. The display supporting device supports the golf club to be displayed in such a way that the grip of the golf club is inserted into a hollow member and the club shaft thereof is supported. FIG. 11 shows an example of a golf club display supporting device for golf club display that supports the golf clubs in such a way that the golf clubs are rested on the display supporting device and the club shafts of the golf clubs are supported at the middle and the heads are placed at the bottom of the structure. This example is a golf club display supporting device for supporting iron clubs, too.
Another golf club display supporting device as shown in FIG. 10 is also known. The display supporting device supports the club shaft of the wood golf club at two points. In the 2-point support method, it is essential that the club shaft be supported at two points, which are separated at a fixed distance from each other, setting aside the positions of those points. In this case, when the supporting members are separate from each other as described in the Japanese Patent Publication No. 04-42925, the effort to adjust those separate members in position and to fix them must be done, and further a member to do the work is needed.
In the case where the supporting member is one member as shown in FIG. 9, to fix the golf club, the distance between the supporting points must be long. In this circumstance, the resulting supporting device consisting of one member has a large size and is expensive, as a natural consequence. Further, the display supporting device is more distinguished than the golf clubs as display goods, and will impair the decorativeness of the display room.
For wood golf clubs, a mold is manufactured directly from club head itself. A concave part is formed in the mold for receiving the club head (convex part). The golf club display supporting device, formed by using the mold, receives the club head of the golf club at the concave part to firmly support the golf club. This type of golf club display supporting device is already utilized in the market as a ready-made fixture.
In the case of supporting the iron clubs for the display, the golf club display supporting device of the two-point support type as shown in FIGS. 10 and 11 has mainly been used. In FIG. 10, two pieces of holder planks each having a plurality of concave parts oppositely arranged are faced apart. Each golf club is bridged between two pieces of the holder planks in such a way that the club shaft of the golf club is supported at two points. In FIG. 11, the end of the grip of each golf club is placed in a convex part, and the club shaft of the golf club is supported by a support member having a plurality of concave parts.